If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, Apple is blushing profusely today.
There are currently over 200 Android apps on Google’s App Store wannabe, Google Play.
The apps claim to do everything from replicating iOS 7 wallpapers, fonts, lock screens, app launchers and calculators to fake Game Centers, knockoff clocks (sans licensing from the Swiss Federal Railways, most likely) and much more:
Google Play’s growing collection of “iOS 7” Android apps here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dear Android settlers, if you want a real iPhone so badly, why don’t you just go get one this weekend?
You only live once. Don’t you deserve the best for a change?
Related articles:
Apple’s new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c arrive in stores on Friday, September 20th – September 17, 2013
Engadget reviews Apple iPhone 5c: A breath of fresh air that will be wildly popular this holiday season – September 18, 2013
Apple’s 64-bit iPhone 5s is by far the fastest smartphone in the world – September 18, 2013
Ben Bajarin: Apple’s new iOS 7 will cause consumers to discover their iPhones all over again – September 18, 2013
John Gruber reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘This is what innovation, real innovation, looks like’ – September 18, 2013
AnandTech reviews iPhone 5s: Apple’s 64-bit A7 is seriously impressive – September 18, 2013
TechCrunch reviews Apple iPhone 5s: The best smartphone available – September 18, 2013
Apple’s new iPhone 5S likely to be in exceptionally short supply – September 18, 2013
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘Makes the best smartphone even better’ – September 18, 2013
Mossberg reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘The best smartphone on the market’ – September 18, 2013
iPhone 5s pre-orders quickly sell out in China; gold iPhone 5s sells out quickest of all – September 17, 2013
Apple’s new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c arrive in stores on Friday, September 20th – September 17, 2013
I mean if you want a iOS 7 knockoff on a cheaply made plastic fail brick, with stolen technology. By all means get these android apps.
Or stop being criminals and buy a iPhone.
And stolen trademarks and copyrights…
Poor bastards! If they just plunked down $200 dollars one time for an iPhone, they would never ever spend a dime on another smartphone in their life. Because of iPhones resale value, they could easily get the cost of upgrading their contract every 2 years, by selling their old iPhone privately.
Exactly, in fact I sold my old iPhone 4 32gb, for what I paid for my iPhone 4S 64gb upfront, plus I got a cashback deal which paid for my first 3 month line rental!
Increasingly larger and larger majority of Android owners are on pre-paid plans (those costing $35 – 50 per month for unlimited everything), and they paid no more than $200 for their phone (no subsidy, no installment plans), with no contract. These people simply can’t afford a $650 phone, regardless of how the payments are spread.
And who cares about these people. I don’t. Not everyone can afford or even wants a Lamborghini.
iPhone jealously and Android IP theft continues unabated and unpunished.
It’s like vegetarian burgers. If you want a burger experience, get a burger. Not just something that looks similar to one.
Most burgers have a vegetarian component. If you want a REAL burger as you so put it, toss away the bun, the catsup, relish, mustard, and onions.
If you sink your fingers into a nice slab of melted cheese and tasty meat. Then you can give it to the vegetarians. Otherwise you are just a wanna be, covering up that meat with vegetarian products. It’s certainly not what a REAL meat eater is all about.
We’ll if he did copy android.
He forgot the following
Instability
Malware
Spyware
Fragmentation
Hardware conflicts
Horrible UI
Poor performance
Bad google play store
BLN,
Even your avatar shows how archaic you have become. Get over it.
Hey MDN, I want a 5s this weekend, tell the android settlers to wait until the following weekend!
I’m pretty sure that Apple has a trademark on iOS. If any apps on Google’s store are using that name as part of their product name, Google has an obligation to take them down.
-jcr
Actually I happened to notice in the EULA that the iOS trademark is owned by Cisco (along with iPhone, presumably).
In any case, it doesn’t belong to Google or its developers.
My first impressions; iOS7 has a lot of good features, but for me, usability has taken a nose dive.
The desktop is more difficult to read, due to: Contrast And Character difference: Lack of shading to give contrast over different backgrounds.
The Icons, seem to have lost depth which makes them harder to differentiate.
An App that I use regularly outside, the stopwatch, is harder to read in daylight,due to contrast and fine characters (The old one was very easy to read).
Now, I’m the first to admit that at 65 I’m probably a bit long in the tooth, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’ve had 30 years experience with computing devices and I had no trouble with iOS6 etc. . So does this mean I go on the scrapheap, along with older iPhones?
You can mess with the fonts under
settings>general>Text size
and
settings>general>accessibility.
Try turning on “bold” or turn on “increased contrast”
The “bold” setting seems to help most people.
Go to Settings > General > Accessibility. There are a range of options to make iOS 7 more readable for you. 🙂
As for me, I’ve only found iOS to be more useful than before. I use a great many of the features that Apple added, and it’s made a lot of older features easier to use as well. There are some things I don’t like about it, but for the most part, I think it’s great. They can’t do everything right for everyone, but they’ve done most of the right stuff for the majority of people. And alternatives (like the Accessibility settings) for those they can’t cater to with it.
I’m almost your age- increase the font size & use bold. It looks the same as the older fonts did
I gave up and started wearing glasses a few years ago 🙂
Oh silly me, I never even for one second even conceived in my mind the need to make my iPhone look like an Android device.
Well, according to the insipid, myopic iHater crowd, Jony Ive did that for you. 😉
OK, I guess while I’m down at the AT&T store buying a 5s on Friday, I’ll compare my 4s/iOS 7 with the latest and greatest Android phones and I’ll see how well Jony did.
I suspect not very well………
PS: there are some phones that have bigger screens, but I have the perfect big screen already, it is called my iPad 1. 🙂 My iphone fits nicely in my pocket, in my car, next to my ear, in my hand, and it is clear, crisp, and sharp. As Goldilocks once said: “Just right”. And I don’t have to worry about any bears…… 🙂
I disagree enough to take a few moments to respond.
Good design is absolutely not timeless. It is inextricably linked to time. Good design achieves value because of the time it occurs in. Good design is valuable for longer than a fad because it is rooted in need. And yet needs change because good (and bad) designs overcome or ameliorate the former need.
iOS 7 is an implementation of iOS interaction for this day. It is different in subtle ways from iOS 6, which was different in subtle ways from iOS 5. The same has been true for the visual interaction in Mac OS X. iOS 8 will undoubtedly have subtle differences from iOS 7.
Your issue with the colorful icons is nothing more than a personal choice regarding a visual aspect of iOS 7. The truth in iOS 7 is that user interaction, and the feedback associated with it, is improved beyond what the previous releases were able to achieve. As Apple’s design focus is on usability, this continued march toward refined user experience amounts to good design.
Next time, before you try to denigrate people whose opinions on iOS differ from yours, you might consider how your expression helps or hurts your reputation: Justin Bieber has over 46M fans on Facebook and has sold nearly $100M of a single song. That said, Apple is projected (as of this morning) to sell around 30M iPhones this fall. So because of your disdain for some color choices, and your choice of comparison to a pop music star by negative connotation, you are trying to put yourself above (at least in the “taste” department) some 30M iPhone users? It just doesn’t speak well for you, I’m afraid. And that’s kind of sad because you’ve had many thoughtful contributions to discussions on MDN.
TRANSLATOR ACTIVATED: “I don’t like change and will complain about anything in my life that changes.”
—-
You can spend 2 seconds customizing iOS 7 to make it look more manly if you’re that insecure.
Eyestrain inducing UIs have nothing to do with manhood. A taste for something not out of Redmond (Windows 8 does a mad hookup with Android and gives birth to iOS7) does not make one insecure. Complaining about change for change’s sake is not a sign of anything but reason.
My takeaway from reading various posts over this abortion of an OS:
The Fanbois are out today and many are not registered users which gives pause to serious consideration of the comments. A Fanboi would praise it if it were an HTC One with an Apple logo pasted on.
Many regular readers/posters are less than thrilled.
What I think pushes me to respond is your continued habit of stereotyping large segments of humanity into simple terms. I will certainly never interview the 43M fans JB has on Facebook to find out their demographics, but before my initial response to you I used Yahoo! search to look for “Justin Beiber Fan Base” and there was exactly this question asked on Ask.com, and plenty of people *claiming* to be over 20 answered that they enjoy his music, thank you very much.
Most of your statements would pass muster if they included the requisite “in my opinion” but you never include that. Instead you phrase your opinions as if they are universal truths. And I’m trying to tell you that when you do that, people stop listening to what you have to say and start preparing their objections.
Do you really think Apple could have sold 700M iOS devices if they hadn’t changed things? Was iPhone OS good enough? Was iPad, with iOS 3, good enough? Good enough to continue, unaltered, for all time? I don’t really think you believe that but you word your discussion points as if you do.
So, you still using OS 9?
iLike iOS7
BLN, the Fanbois have latched on to Ive as the messiah now that the bureaucrat with no vision (Cook) is in charge. Remember what Jobs said about the Bozos. Well, people other than sales guys can be Bozos and Ive has no business on the software side of Apple.
@BLN. Ever see the vibrant colors in Asian cultures? You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. There’s a huge emerging demographic you are not part of. iOS 7 is not just about tweens and teenyboppers.
The fact that there is no market for iPhone apps that mimic Android OS pretty much says it all.
People around sure cant handle the truth. iOS 7 is a rip-off of Android/Windows, and a quite hideous one at that. Add to that the fact the it’s most ballyhooed “new features” have been used by jailbreakers for quite some time now (control center?? Ever heard of sbs settings??) and what end up with is precisely what BLN said. Enjoy your bright, hideous, cartoonish-looking mess…wouldn’t be caught dead with it
Do you seriously think that anyone gives a flying fsck what you say? You’re wrong on so many levels it’s not even funny.
As to iOS 7 being a rip-off of Android/Windows, that’s so laughable. Show me ONE phone that even looked vaguely like the original iPhone and I’ll go down on you.
=:~)
You obviously give a flying fsck about what I say…otherwise you wouldn’t have responded 😊
Listen I know that this site does not allow much objectivity or difference of opinion, but if you can’t so the obvious design cues that Apple has taken from Android, Windows and WebOS then you are every bit the sheep that fan droids say you are: http://www.sanoksilik.com/2013/06/apple-ios-7-android-copycat-zdnet/
Not to say that ANY of those companies didn’t rip off Apple first (I don’t think Android would exist as it does now were it not for Apple) but its a little hypocritical to sue someone from stealing your ideas when you steal theirs, isn’t it? Anyway, iOS 7 in my opinion is a girly-looking, overly bright mess with “new” features that have been available from Cydia for years…if you like it, more power to you; I think it’s hideous
Man, you’re a complete idiot. When are you going to grow up?
iOS 7 is a huge step forwards. Reading your garbage is a huge step backwards.
Most likely cause for his flip flopping on Apple stuff is one of his nuts is starting to shrivel. LOL
His nut is being retired.
yeah, I used to do that with my PC, putting Mac OS backgrounds, Apple decals, Mac OS icons, Themes, things like that, don’t judge me I was so poor.
C’mon then, BLN, show us, in detail, what Ive has copied from Android, bearing in mind, of course, that Android has been a clear and blatant copy of iOS since 2007.
iOS 7 is more of a ripoff of Windows 8 than Android. The cheesy graphics, gaudy color and hipster fonts are coming straight outa Redmond. The swipe control panel IS straight out of Android.
The bulk of Apple users concurred with the elimination of fake stitched leather and felt from the OS. That was not a mandate to give it a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover.
Maybe Jony needs to come out of the closet as a Windows 8 fan.
The one thing I’d really like to be able to customise is the folder background colour. I’m not keen on the current neutral grey, I’d prefer either a much darker grey, or a choice of darker or lighter colours, depending on colour of wallpaper.
Also, how the hell do you remove apps from the task bar!
Tapping and holding doesn’t work any more, is there another option?
I agree with the folder color issue. I ended up changing to the Aurora background so the folders would show better.
By task bar do you mean recent apps? Just drag or flick the the window of the app up and away, not that app icon.
Cheers, Jim, if I’d only done a quick search I’d have found that out for myself! Apparently, it’s possible to close out three apps at once by that method, which is cool. Nice feature, I like it a lot.
And people wonder why Apple is so secretive abut unannounced products.
How hilarious. Fandroids claim to despise Apple so much, yet so many Android owners desperately need to tart up their phones to look like iPhones. Losers.
——RM
Why download an Android rip-off for your iOS rip off?
Has Samsung issued their official copy yet?
Didn’t Samsung have to pay Apple a billion dollars for slavishly copying Apple’s iphone?
You guys are such tools. What the article does not tell you is that there are a ton of apps that also replicate the look of Meego, Blackberry, HTC Sense, Samsung Touchwiz, and other third party skins/phones. Why? Because on Android you are not limited by Google in how you want your phone to look to make it fully yours. You want round icons? Go for it. Dark icons with white contrast, sure why not. You want to do away with Home, Back, preview keys and use gestures instead. yeah, you can do that too. Android is infinitely customizable and that’s part of its appeal. To those who are arguing that people who buy Androids should just plop another $200 to buy an iPhone, you do realize that most high end Android phones cost as much as the iPhone, right? Hell, many have specs that outperform the iPhone. This argument you guys put forth is silly, really. People use whatever they like, you like iPhones, knock yourself out, Android devices, sure, why not? Blackberry’s, ok then. Windows phone? sure. Competition is good for the market, if you don’t believe me, look at how much iOS 7 copied from Android (i.e. Notification tray and more) and Windows 8 (flat icons, color schemes, etc.)?